Paying judges fairly

Saturday, Jan. 5, 2008 | midnight

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist for two decades urged Congress to increase judicial pay, and his successor, John Roberts, has continued Rehnquist's fight.

In his annual year-end review of the court system, Roberts once again outlined the case for increasing judicial pay. Judicial salaries have been eroding over the past four decades, Roberts said, because of a change Congress made in 1969.

Instead of increasing judges' salaries each year by the rise in the cost of living, Congress decided to give judges the same pay as members of Congress, which gets increased occasionally. As a result, judges often go for several years without raises.

In 1969 federal judges made significantly more than law school professors and deans at the nation's leading universities. The opposite is now true. The United States Courts Administrative Office reports that, when adjusted for inflation, judicial pay has declined 25 percent since the change.

Both the House and the Senate have bills that would get rid of the provision tying judges' salaries to congressional pay and would boost salaries significantly. In the House plan, which has gained approval from the Judiciary Committee, a District Court judge's salary would be raised to $233,500 a year, up from $165,200.

No one is disputing that the current salary for a federal judge is a lot of money. But when comparing it with the salaries of others in the legal profession, it doesn't stack up. Roberts argued that the current system has left “federal trial judges -- the backbone of our system of justice -- earning about the same as (and in some cases less than) first-year lawyers at firms in major cities, where many of the judges are located.”

No one should go into the judiciary expecting to become rich, but judicial wages are serving as a deterrent for the best candidates. Congress should increase judicial pay.